Early in the morning of June 20, the Monarch Queen tied up at the dock at Dürnstein, closely followed by the light cruiser Crucestar of the Ukrainian Navy, which had been shadowing us all night. We had entered the Wachau Valley, a spectacularly beautiful 36-kilometer (22 mile) stretch of the Danube in Lower Austria between the towns of Krems and Melk.
I had arisen early and while our cruise ship was docking, I went to the top deck with my Canon EOS-6D DSLR and 70-200mm telephoto lens to try to capture river scenes in the morning sunlight. The Danube is flowing north at Dürnstein and we were on the east bank; the rising sun lit up the west bank splendidly, while the east bank, with the town of Dürnstein, was still partly in shadow.
The Monarch Queen had tied up a little way downriver from the town and getting there, as well as getting around in town, was done strictly on foot. After breakfast I began the trek with the rest of the Monarch Queen group, minus Sandie, who was not up to much walking that day. We reached the town via the Treppelweg, which means towpath in English; it which runs all along the Danube in Austria and in the days before the arrival of the railroad was indeed used as a towpath to haul boats up the river against the current. It now serves as a bicycle path as well as a pedestrian walkway. From the Treppelweg we had splendid views of the west bank of the river, the town of Dürnstein and of Dürnstein castle on its hill high above.
About Dürnstein Castle. In 1190 Leopold V, Duke of Austria, of the House of Babenberg, embarked upon the Third Crusade. Frederick Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor, had done the same the previous year, but he drowned while trying to cross a river in Turkey and was succeeded by his son, who became Henry VI. Henry did not go on the Crusade, but Kings Richard I of England and Philip II of France did take the cross. The occasion for the Third Crusade was the capture of Jerusalem and other Christian-held areas of Palestine in 1187 by Sultan Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, commonly known as Saladin. Philip and Richard were bitter enemies and each only agreed to go on the crusade if the other would also.
Upon arrival in Palestine in the spring of 1991, Duke Leopold, Philip and Richard teamed up to besiege the city of Acre. They did in fact take the city, but then they started to quarrel. At stake was who would be the next King of Jerusalem, which they intended to retake from Saladin. Philip and Leopold’s candidate, Conrad of Montferrat, who was related to them both, was the eventual winner, but he was assassinated before his coronation, and they suspected Richard of arranging the murder. Furthermore, Richard had enraged Leopold by casting down his standard from the walls of Acre on the grounds that Leopold was only a duke, not a king, and therefore not entitled to equal status with Philip and Richard, even though Leopold was the representative of the Holy Roman Emperor. So, in August 1991, Philip and Leopold left Palestine, leaving Richard to continue the Third Crusade by himself.
Richard won a couple more victories, but he did not capture Jerusalem, and he was all too aware that Philip II of France, not to mention his own younger brother John, were taking advantage of his absence to advance their own nefarious schemes, so he signed a treaty with Saladin and left for home.
Unfortunately, circumstances forced him to take a risky and uncertain route, which happened to lead through Austria, which of course was ruled by his now arch-enemy Leopold. Richard disguised himself in an attempt to avoid detection, but he was recognized and arrested anyway. Leopold V clapped into prison in — you guessed it — the castle of Dürnstein, where the local baron, Hadmar II of Kuenring, became Richard’s jailer.
Richard did not remain in Dürnstein long, however. The Pope, Celestine III, was not happy about the imprisonment of a Crusader, which was considered illegal and shameful, and he excommunicated Leopold. This was no small matter in those days, and Leopold was unwilling to endure papal wrath on his own, but also reluctant to simply set Richard free, so he handed the king over to Henry VI, the Holy Roman Emperor, who also bore Richard a few grudges and who imprisoned him in another castle. Henry also had powerful supporters in the Church, which made the Pope back off from excommunicating him. To release Richard, Henry demanded a ransom of 150,000 marks, three times the annual income of the English Crown. Richard’s mother, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, worked assiduously to raise the ransom, and did so, despite the machinations of John and Philip, who offered Henry VI 80,000 marks to keep Richard a prisoner. But Henry VI took the ransom, and Richard eventually went home, to find that Philip II of France had occupied Normandy in his absence. Richard forgave John for his schemes, but was eventually killed fighting in France, whereupon John became King of England anyway. And he became known as John Lackland, because Philip seized his remaining possessions in France.
Leopold V got 35,000 marks as his share of the ransom, but he did not live to enjoy it very long. To obtain absolution from the Pope, he signed up for another Crusade, but before he could go he died from gangrene resulting from a foot crushed when his horse fell on him in a tournament. Henry VI fared better, going on to conquer Sicily with the aid of the ransom money, and soon becoming the most powerful monarch in Europe; he died in 1197.
So Richard the Lionheart’s brief imprisonment in Dürnstein became its claim to fame. Hadmar II of Kuenring, the erstwhile jailer of Richard the Lionheart, lived to the ripe old age of 77. His descendants continued to rule in Dürnstein until 1355. The Kuenrings were ministeriales – in effect vassals or minions – of the Babenberg dukes of Austria, but their line died out in 1246 and was eventually replaced by the Habsburgs, who may have wanted to impose their own direct rule (the sources available to me are vague about this). Regardless, the Kuenrings continued to be powerful and influential long afterward, and their name is still remembered in Dürnstein.
During the Thirty Years’ War, in 1645, Swedish troops attacked Dürnstein castle and turned it into the ruin we see today. I did not attempt to make the steep climb up to the castle, which on that warm June day was likely to have done me in. Instead, I roamed the streets of the town until it was time to return to the ship. The only way to enter the town is by the Kremsertor, or Krems Gate, at the southeast end. There had been another gate at the northwest end of town, the Weissenkirchen Gate, but it was torn down in the 20th century. In any case, the Kremstor was always the main gate, with the heaviest fortifications, because it faced the direction from which attacks were most likely to come, whether from rival towns such as Krems, oppressive rulers or foreign intruders such as the Magyars.
Located inside the Krems Gate is a wine shop, the Vinothek Kremstor, which displays its wares on a rack hanging on the wall outside. A couple from the Gate1 group asked me to take their picture in front of the display, and I gladly obliged; they graciously returned the favor.
Dürnstein is a tourist trap par excellence, by which I mean that it is the best kind of tourist trap. Visitors can spend as many hours and as much or as little money as they please. I did not spend much. I bought postcards, a T-shirt for myself and a few trinkets for friends and relatives. Although the Wachau valley is famous for its fine wines, I didn’t buy any wine because the bottles would have been a heavy burden and costly to ship home. There were some enticing eating-places, but no time to enjoy them and anyway lunch was waiting on the boat. So I simply ambled from the Krems Gate down the Hauptstrasse, the main street of Dürnstein, pausing to shoot photos of the various attractions I encountered.
One noteworthy landmark was the steeple of the Kunigundenkirche, the Church of St. Cunigunde, dedicated to the wife of Emperor Henry II. It was the first parish church of Dürnstein, built by the Kuenring family in the early 13th century, not long after the incarceration of Richard the Lionheart. The Kuenrings passed it on to the Poor Clares, an order of Franciscan nuns. The church was demolished in 1783, except for the steeple; the land on which the church stood was then used as a cemetery, which is still the final resting place of deceased residents of Dürnstein.
I didn’t go into Dürnstein Abbey, but contented myself with photogaphing it from afar. The abbey was begun in 1410 by the Kuenrings, who brought in Augustinian monks from Bohemia to build the church, cloister and monastery. These were all Gothic in style; the abbey did not acquire its Baroque appearance until a major renovation begun in 1710, and the magnificent bell tower was added in 1733.
Emperor Joseph II dissolved many of the monasteries during his reign, among them Dürnstein Abbey. Its properties were handed over to one of the surviving monasteries and it was essentially turned into a parish church, which it remains today.
I have always found the German word for “City Hall” rather amusing because it is so suggestive: “Rathaus.” (It’s not only the English translation of “rat,” the German word for council, that provides the humor; the German word for “rat” the rodent is “die Ratte.”) In Dürnstein, the building which became the Rathaus was first built in the Gothic style in the mid-sixteenth century, and a few years later, in 1563, rebuilt in the Renaissance fashion, although the windows and doors were retained in their original Gothic form. Around 1593 the city fathers bought the structure and began to use it as a town hall. But they soon found that it was too large for their needs, and they sold the northern half to a private citizen who turned it into an inn, now known as the Altes Rathaus. The southern half, which the town retained, contains a Registry Office, where marriages are recorded, and a Conference Hall, where marriages are often performed. In days of yore, the conference hall also served as a courtroom, and rooms adjacent to it were used as a jailhouse. The ground floor used to hold a public wine press, where local vintners who did not have their own wine presses could come to squeeze their grapes. The courtyard and the steps leading to the Registry office are often used as venue for wedding photographs.
A little way up the street from the Rathaus is the Kuenringerhof, a restaurant and guest house bearing the name of the family who for centuries did so much to shape the development of the town. I haven’t been able to find out if the Kuenrings or their descendants still own it, but having their name on it helps to ensure that they are not forgotten.
All too soon it was time to return to the Monarch Queen for lunch and the next leg of our journey, which was to take us through the rest of the Wachau Valley to Melk.